Japan, circa 1707

Ok, not exactly Japan itself, but a Western map (possibly French) from 1707.

I found it on Wikipedia while looking for information about another topic that I’ll talk about soon (there’s a big clue on the map itself for people who know the history of Japan well)

You’ll notice that even then, Shikoku was not deemed important (merely a rectangle). 🙁

Actually, one can see that the cartographer got things mixed up. Shikoku is called something like “Tokoesi” and that almost sounds like “Tsukushi“, that is one of Kyūshū‘s old names. Meanwhile, Kyūshū is called “Cikoko“, which is obviously a bad transcription of “Shikoku”.

Despite the embarrassing shape and the wrong name, one can notice that the cartographer got Shikoku‘s provinces right: